Mazzoni, G. (2024). On modern poetry. Translated by A. Yampolskaya. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. (In Russ.)

Abstract

The problem of poetic subject features prominently in a number of 20th-c. philological and philosophical studies. In a wider context of other works by scholars of the humanities, the review discusses the general theoretical postulates and specific conceptual and methodological characteristics of Mazzoni’s new book. The author examines contemporary poetry from a broader historical perspective, considering a period from antiquity to the 20th c., and with the interplay of cultural, aesthetic, and social systems in mind. A ‘long-term view,’ Mazzoni’s perspective of choice, on the one hand, and reinterpreted Hegelian and Adornian methods, on the other, allow him to formulate his own model of the transformation of literary process. It is founded in the fluctuations of subjectivity as the underlying category of modern poetry. The relevance of the issues brought up by Mazzoni stems from the fact that they deal with identity crises, depersonalization, phenomena of modern ‘choral subjectivity,’ ‘group subjectivity,’ etc.